Qualitative Transparency Deliberations

What follows is a comment submitted by Charles Kurzman, UNC : I’ve already written about being transparent to our contacts in the field and being transparent to future researchers. If we look at the research enterprise from a broad perspective, as the risks of repression force us to do, we are part...

What follows is a comment submitted by Charles Kurzman, UNC : I am less worried about the reliability of the research product than its validity. If we do not trust researchers to report faithfully on their findings, then all is lost. Many insights cannot be reproduced with non-human sources of info...

What follows is a comment submitted by Charles Kurzman, University of North Carolina : Obvious risk of transparency: divulging the identity of one’s contacts. It is impossible to avoid divulging the identity of one’s contacts, if a government really wants to know who they are. Most academic researc...

What follows is a comment submitted by Charles Kurzman, University of North Carolina : I am increasingly concerned about the safety of researchers in the field as well. The murder of Giulio Regeni, a student doing dissertation fieldwork in Egypt, crystallizes a problem that I think has grown in rec...

What follows is a comment submitted by Jill Crystal, Auburn University:

Insofar as one goal of transparency is making research reproducible, I'm not sure I buy into some of the underlying assumptions. But in reality, who reproduces someone else's research?

What follows is a comment submitted by Jill Crystal, Auburn University : It's bad enough that people can't work in much of the Middle East as it is. (Flying back from Qatar last year - which typically means Iraq-Syria-Turkey I noticed we just flew over Iran and turned left - so the places we study ...

What follows is a comment submitted by Sheila Carapico, University of Richmond : Verbatim notes can also be problematic, especially though not only in the original language (say, Arabic; much less Kurdish), where there are likely to be tell-tale signs – in Yemen, for instance, whether the current i...

What follows is a comment submitted by Sheila Carapico, University of Richmond: There are two sides. Transparency in the field – candor about the research topic – is essential. I have plenty of memories of researchers who lied outright about their investigations, protecting themselves, perhaps, in ...

What follows is a comment submitted by Sheila Carapico, University of Richmond : I would insist that whenever and however possible researchers rely on public transcripts: writings, speeches, performances, documentaries, and so forth. Our field (Middle East political science) fetishizes the intervie...